Roccat Khan AIMO 7.1 Gaming Headset Review

By Tom Jaskulka

Manufacturer: ROCCAT GmbH
Product Name: Khan Aimo – 7.1 High Resolution RGB Gaming Headset
Model Number: ROC-14-800
UPC: 4250288175549
Price As Tested: $119.99 (Newegg | Amazon)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by ROCCAT GmbH.

Following a wave of high-resolution headsets that have been released into the market recently (as well as their very own Khan Pro), Roccat has added a splash of intelligent RGB lighting to their new HiRes audio headset and given it a new name: the Khan Aimo. More than just a name change and some lighting, this update of the Khan Pro keeps the HiRes designation but swaps the 3.5mm cable for USB to add some new capabilities. This allows for a new 7.1 Surround Sound feature, powered by the built-in 24-bit @ 96 kHz DAC sound card – a first for HiRes audio headsets. Will enhanced surround sound in high resolution change your game? Benchmark Reviews has a chance to take a closer look at Roccat’s Khan Aimo headset, so listen in and let’s find out!

ROCCAT KHAN AIMO – 7.1 HIGH RESOLUTION RGB GAMING HEADSET
The Khan AIMO represents a gaming first with its exclusive Hi-Res audio compatible surround sound. Adding a top-end virtual 7.1 headset to the AIMO series, it boasts a premium hardware spec with its powerful driver units and built-in high fidelity sound card. As impressive structurally as it is in terms of performance, the Khan AIMO’s stainless steel sliders provide incredible robustness yet with remarkably low weight at only 275 grams. Together with its memory foam earpads, this makes it a headset suitable for use over extended periods of time. The Khan AIMO is comfort. Surrounded.

AUDIO MAJESTY
An industry benchmark, the Khan Aimo is the first Hi-Res audio compatible surround sound gaming headset. 50mm drivers with robust diaphragms deliver rich 7.1 audio with precision and clarity, letting you locate sounds flawlessly. Well ahead of its competitors, it boasts a built-in, high-fidelity 24-bit 96KHz DAC sound card with virtually no noise interference, for full gaming focus coupled with audio majesty.

PREMIUM COMFORT
Premium engineering for premium comfort, the Khan AIMO leaves no stone unturned in pursuit of its ergonomic perfection. With a noticeable attention to detail, the headset looks and feels robust precisely because it is. Adjustable stainless steel sliders make it suitable for any head size, and top-end components were used in order to make it comfortable yet light. That’s why the Khan AIMO features memory foam earpads and weighs only 275 grams, making it suitable for gaming session after gaming session.

AIMO ILLUMINATION
The Khan AIMO lets you create your own signature style with four LEDs customizable in 16.8m colors. Powered by Aimo, the most advanced lighting engine on the market, its illumination reacts organically to your gaming behavior. Further increasing human-device-app integration, Aimo presents easily configured, fluid, scenario-driven lighting events for a total next-gen experience.

ROCCAT SWARM
Swarm is the software incarnation of ROCCAT’s future ready philosophy. It’ll cover you for all relevant gaming platforms and devices. It’s the next-gen system that keeps on top all games, apps and ROCCAT products in one place. It provides next-level product integration, working as a unified driver suite with an overview of all of your ROCCAT devices. Say goodbye to multiple tray icons – with Swarm you have a veritable gaming command HQ for every weapon in your arsenal.

As of April 2018, the ROCCAT Khan AIMO 7.1 RGB headset was available online for $119.99 (Newegg | Amazon). As always, we’ll start with a look around the outside of the Khan Aimo, then we’ll zoom in for a closer look at some details on the next few pages.

The packaging forgoes the past trend of trapezoidal shapes and sticks with the traditional square box. Right away, the Khan Aimo seems like it’s designed for a slightly different target market. A few talking points are illustrated on the box, with only the HiRes Audio badge and some AIMO branding accompanying the product name.

The back contains the features in multiple languages and some of the same talking points sketched on a new perspective of the Khan Aimo. There’s no way to get a closer look at the headset without taking it out of the box (less important in this age of ordering everything online anyway), so let’s get to it!

The headset itself is well protected within formed plastic packaging. A short information document talks about some warranty information and how to get started (essentially: download Roccat SWARM).

The Khan Aimo stays secure enough in the molded plastic that it should arrive on your doorstep without any issues. Let’s take that single piece of tape off and take a closer look at what makes up this gaming headset.

Like the Khan Pro, the Khan Aimo is primarily comprised of dark matte plastic (utilizing stainless steel for the headband). Unlike the Khan Pro, the Khan Aimo uses a slighly more subdued color scheme, with the Roccat Cat and logotype displayed unobtrusively using a black-on-gunmetal approach.

The right side/earcup houses the built-in volume wheel and a tactile button (which seems to have no purpose – it isn’t mentioned anywhere in the product documentation or the SWARM driver. Through experimentation, it appears to switch the headset between the 7.1 surround and 2.0 stereo modes, although before installing the driver it also switched the lighting on and off…if there is a way to program this button, I haven’t found it yet).

The left side/earcup contains the swiveling boom microphone. Moving the microphone out of your peripheral vision (swiveling it to the vertical position) mutes it automatically, where moving back into place in front of your mouth activates it again. It does this with a slight tactile bump at the actuation point. I’ve personally preferred an LED mute indicator in the past, as it informs others in the household that they are or aren’t currently being recorded. Not that my dogs paid much attention to that in the first place…

Both earcups swivel 90-degrees, making storage easier or allowing a user to hang the Khan Aimo around their neck more comfortably.

The non-detachable braided USB cable hangs from the left side of the headset.

Here’s a closer look at the volume wheel and “Surround Mode” button on the right/rear earcup. This seems like a good location, I didn’t experience any difficulty reaching up and adjusting the volume quickly.

The Khan Aimo is a circumaural headset. Large oval memory foam leatherette pads form a comfortable seal all the way around your ears, bringing them into alignment with the 50mm drivers hiding beneath the mesh inside.

There are a few more aspects of the Khan Aimo to cover, so follow along as we take an even closer look.

The headset is flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of head shapes as well as survive regular use without causing any problems. I didn’t notice any creaking or popping of hinges or joints when using the Khan Aimo normally.

USB is the only connection option available, making the Khan Aimo incompatible for use with mobile phones or other devices.

A stainless steel band adds some rigidity and longevity to the construction of the Khan Aimo.

It’s still of questionable value to me as a gamer to have RGB lighting effects on a headset – as much as I enjoy color matching system builds and peripherals, it’s hard to imagine any other scenario where having configurable lighting in an area you’ll never see in use makes any sort of sense. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the lighting on this product – it’s tasteful, done well as an accent instead of the main feature, and looks…almost sophisticated.

As befits the AIMO name, the lighting is vivid and almost organic. The Khan Aimo doesn’t contain multiple color zones like the Kone Aimo mouse, but the color shifts are still relatively smooth and fade well into each other. The spectrum displays all colors well – yellows, oranges, mint green and pinks…all display vividly and clearly. Speaking of lighting, let’s take a look at what drives the lighting and sound options for the Khan Aimo: Roccat’s SWARM driver.

The Roccat Khan AIMO uses Roccat’s SWARM driver, a centralized settings software for most of their newer peripherals. If you’ve used any of Roccat’s recent devices this section will look very familiar, as the Khan AIMO does not stray far from this standard approach.

The moment a new Roccat SWARM-enabled device is attached, the driver will notify you to download the module that corresponds to the new peripheral (in this case, the Khan AIMO).

A new driver will arrive packaged with the Khan AIMO module – the update leads you through this process without issue.

Roccat may want to change the wording on the firmware update button – this can initially be confusing, since it prompts for an update yet sounds like it’s restoring / recovering the previous firmware…

Thankfully the progress bar proceeded as expected, and the Khan AIMO is finally ready to configure and use.

There aren’t many settings to dig through for this particular product (no macros, no programmable buttons) so the “favorites” tab may not be as helpful as some of the other more complex Roccat products. Still, simply click on any push pin for any settings group on the next two tabs to attach them here.

The Settings tab is where you’ll spend most of your time. This contains the Sample Rate settings to extract those High Resolution sounds from the Khan AIMO, as well as an extensive equalizer complete with a wide array of presets.

Scrolling down reveals a few more options – a master (system) volume, a surround sound switch to flip between 2.0 and 7.1 surround modes, and the microphone settings to configure noise cancellation, sample rate (44.1 KHz or 48 KHz), sensitivity and the voice changing effects (which are fun to play around with, but all sounded “a bit silly” to my Discord and Teamspeak friends).

The Illumination tab allows you to configure the lighting. Although there are four “zones” present on the Khan Aimo (two per side), they are not individually configurable – all zones are set at the same time. Only the Color Cycle option allows for gradients – the rest are all single-color settings (although brightness levels and speed of the effect can be adjusted).

There are other options for illumination, although I’d imagine most purchasers of this AIMO-specific product would use the AIMO Intelligent Lighting System setting and leave it there – especially considering the dubious value of lighting in an area that you cannot see while playing a game or otherwise using a computer. Perhaps the best use of headset lighting is with the Discord integrations SteelSeries uses, which can help others in the room visually see that people are speaking to you – nothing like that exists so far in Roccat’s drivers.

I used a lot of the resources from audiocheck.net to experience the technical limits of the Roccat Khan AIMO, but most of my time spent with them was listening to whatever I was most familiar with. I always try to spend an evening listening to albums that I like to compare different sound devices with – I tend to stick to more “electronic” tracks that are usually pretty instrumental.

I’ll break out the Tron: Legacy soundtrack for it’s Daft Punk collaborated orchestral pieces, and my go to album for almost anything is The Glitch Mob’s Drink The Sea. I couldn’t find these two particular albums in a 24-bit/96 KHz format unfortunately, but The Glitch Mob’s Love Death Immortality album was available on HDTracks.com at that higher bitrate.

I try to stream some radio stations from my Amazon Prime account as well (with some classical music thrown in for good measure), but the real fun is using them in a game with great sound engineering like the Battlefield series. I played through a few rounds of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS and messed around in ARMA3’s sandbox missions, as well as snuck around in Far Cry 5. I’ll be the first to admit my hearing isn’t what it used to be (and I’m no sound engineer in the first place), so if possible I’d recommend trying out any pair of headphones in person that you’re interested in – the experience can vary greatly per person.

These being capable of more than most streaming services would offer, I also did my best to source some higher-quality tracks (or play the above albums directly when possible). Most games don’t bother with audio above 16-bit/48 kHz, and finding music at lossless-quality generally means ripping it yourself or using a service like Tidal (which I do not use). Still, the enhanced specs of the Roccat Khan Aimo should result in as-good-or-better sound reproduction than typical headphones, so let’s see if that’s true.

• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z270X-K5
• System Memory: 2×8 GB DDR4 2400 MHz
• Processor: Intel Core i5 6600K @4.4 GHz
• Audio: N/A (USB Headset)
• Video: Asus Strix GTX 1070 Ti
• Disk Drive 1: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M2 SSD
• Disk Drive 2: Seagate 1TB 7200 RPM HDD
• Enclosure: Phanteks P400
• PSU: EVGA G3 750W
• Monitor: Acer XG270HU (2560×1440/144 Hz)
• Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit

Let’s start with the audiocheck.net sound samples. Their headphone tests are pretty straightforward, and walk you through frequency tests, binaural recordings, driver matching tests and polarity checks (among others). I found the frequency tests especially interesting, although they correspond more to the abilities of your ears rather than the capabilities of the drivers. The Roccat Khan AIMO was one of the first headsets that I felt I could hear the entire range (although my hearing still peaks around 19 KHz). Even 10 Hz – an extremely low frequency – seemed present.

The driver matching test moves through the entire spectrum of sound waves. I didn’t notice any discrepancies between the left and right drivers on the Khan AIMO.

The “bass shaker” test was interesting, as it is designed to uncover any unwanted noises from rapidly-vibrating drivers. Perhaps you have heard a vehicle pass by that has a powerful subwoofer installed – and you can tell by the entire trunk assembly buzzing like a nest of angry hornets. That is what this test is designed to highlight (and to be clear, that isn’t an effect you would want in a headset. Or a car, for that matter). The Khan AIMO passed the test without any buzzing whatsoever, with the bass remaining impressive into the lowest frequencies.

The Dynamic Volume test starts at a “full volume,” then lowers the volume in steps with the last audible step being the dynamic range of the headset (or more accurately, your ears). I could still hear the voiceover at 48 dB below full scale volume with hints of the voiceover beneath that. That’s a better result than most of my headphones, although no doubt due to the better-than-average passive noise isolation from the memory foam and leatherette earcups.

The polarity tests showed the Khan AIMO to be wired correctly, and the binaural test revealed a sound stage that was capable of reproducing an accurate sensation of direction and distance. The sound stage is quite realistic if the source material supports it – the binaural recordings sounded lifelike and were easy to place in a 3-Dimensional space.

I took a quiet afternoon at work to bring the Roccat Khan Aimo for some additional testing in a new environment. I was honestly a bit surprised: the moment I put them on, the world disappeared around me. It’s common and cliche, but that’s the experience that I had. I could not hear anything other than my music. Even with the music off and no sound, the noise isolation is enough that it’s like wearing earplugs (I didn’t realize how much ambient noise there was at all times – the Khan Aimos offered an honest moment of respite from the noise). I could barely hear myself typing on a mechanical keyboard (I use two keyboards: Cherry Browns or Logitech Romer Gs), and certainly not with music playing. Granted, shutting yourself off from everything isn’t necessarily the ideal outcome for a job depending on responsibilities (phones ringing, hearing monitoring alarms, oh and coworkers…), but it was impressive how they provided a momentary escape from the usual hustle and bustle.

It bears mentioning: I heard things in the Tron: Legacy Soundtrack that I’ve honestly never heard before, and I’ve been using this soundtrack to compare headphones for years. I couldn’t even find these tracks in a native 24-bit/96 kHz format, but there was enough enhanced clarity to bring out some additional details. It’s too bad the Khan Aimo is incompatible with phones or media devices, I would have enjoyed using them just to listen to music with – of course, the Khan Pro would be a better choice for that, the Aimo is designed to compliment the rest of the AIMO products (Horde keyboard and Kone mouse).

Thankfully, I had similar experiences in the games I tested the Roccat Khan Aimo with.

After a few rounds of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, I found that the crispness and spatial awareness of the high-resolution surround feature is game enhancing. There were some gaps in the channel distribution for 7.1 (playing with some settings would no doubt help with that), but otherwise it was a marked improvement. I had little problem identifying the location of footsteps or far-off gunshots in the distance.

Far Cry 5’s forests of Montana setting came alive as well, and Battlefield’s excellent sound engineering was a delight while using the Roccat Khan Aimo headset. Overall, I enjoyed my time with the Khan Aimo headset – the sound speaks for itself. It wasn’t enough to blow me away (not as noticeable as moving from 1080p to 1440p for instance), but there were enough added details to notice a difference.

Before I conclude, there’s a few things to keep in mind. Headsets in general are pretty subjective – all the graphs / curves / features won’t make a difference if you don’t like how they feel on your head (or if you don’t want to be seen wearing them!). Everyone has different tastes and opinions for how their favorite music and games are supposed to sound, so personal preference ends up playing a big part with any headset. If you demand the absolute best sound, you really shouldn’t be looking at devices under $300 anyway – there’s obviously better sounding headphones available if you’re willing to pay for them, but this review was written with computer enthusiasts in mind that want a single device to game/chat with their friends/listen to music. With those things in mind, let’s talk about the Roccat Khan AIMO.

I can’t complain at all about the performance of the Roccat Khan Aimo. The headset tests went off without a hitch, and I couldn’t deny the excellent sound they were capable of. Listening to music was especially a delight, although I personally didn’t notice much difference between music sourced at 24-bit / 96 KHz native and tracks streamed from online. That’s not to say there wasn’t a difference, but it was subtler than I expected.

Similarly, I have no complaints about the appearance of this headset. I like the subdued color scheme, and I didn’t feel like I would have to explain things to my coworkers if I were seen wearing them at work (…except for the lights, I’d probably have to explain the lights). However, for a gaming headset with RGB lighting, it’s surprisingly reserved.

Picking up the Khan Aimo felt like a premium experience. The memory foam was luxurious, and the primarily-plastic and stainless steel construction never felt cheap or brittle. I would have preferred a detachable USB cable for a little more peace-of-mind (especially with dogs running about), but nothing about the Khan Aimo seemed fragile or under-engineered.

The Khan Aimo is a High-Resolution audio headset, sure, but that isn’t it’s only contribution or function. The big feature here (other than the intelligent RGB lighting) is the ability to broadcast all of that 24-bit / 96 KHz splendor across 7.1 surround channels, a first for HighRes audio headsets I believe. A solid microphone that auto-mutes when out of the way makes the Khan Aimo a solid choice for a gaming headset to match your Horde Aimo keyboard and Kone Aimo mouse. I would have liked to see some useful functions for the lighting since it’s there (to show when others are speaking when using a chat application, for instance), but lighting is tough for any headset to pull off – it just doesn’t make as much sense there as it does on a keyboard or mouse (or even a mouse pad, for that matter).

The Roccat Khan Aimo can be found online for $119.99 (Newegg | Amazon), placing it above the typical $50-$80 range for gaming headsets. This type of price isn’t wildly inappropriate, most USB digital surround sound headsets with lighting end up in the $100 range anyway. Coupled with excellent sound and a High-Resolution audio badge to match the 7.1 surround feature, the comfortable Khan Aimo is an acceptable value – that is, if you find the extra audio resolution capabilities are worth it to you. I think this particular headset would be a no-brainer at $100, but at $120 it needs to pass by some very good competition.

Still, if you’re looking to complete your AIMO setup, the Khan Aimo is the only option right now – and thankfully, it’s a good one.

+ Excellent sound worthy of a “High Resolution Audio” badge
+ Excellent passive noise isolation
+ Very comfortable, even during extended use
+ One of the few High-Res audio headsets with 7.1 surround sound

– USB connection limits use with other devices – PCs only
– Lighting is done well but of dubious value
– Retractable/detachable mic would have been preferred

• Performance: 9.25
• Appearance: 8.25
• Construction: 8.50
• Functionality: 8.00
• Value: 7.25